Baseball McCarthyism

Some of what I am about to state in this piece is wrong.     Its wrong because there may not be a way to answer a question that has been posed to me recently.    See if you ask questions such as who was best hitter of all time, who had the best outfield arm, or even the age-old question of who was the best centerfielder in NY in the 50s, you may have some statistics to back up your opinion, but in the end its truly your opinion that will provide your answer.   And that's perfectly acceptable, because one of the most beautiful things about baseball is the ability to argue over questions that really don't have an answer.  

Fortunately, and unfortunately, we have statistics in which to compare players performance.   Yet as the old saying goes, there are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.    But statistics can present how Todd Helton is Lou Gehrig at home (.350 / .447 / .613) but Richie Sexson on the road (.289 / .389 / .475).   Okay, maybe that's a little harsh.  Maybe he's Derrek Lee on the road.

The question that's been asked of me may be a bit harder to answer, because the statistics are perhaps less 'direct'.   Yet in the end I think you will agree with me.  It all started with a basic thought from one of our listeners on "Just Talking To The Cornfield" about the performance of Torre vs. Girardi, which then morphed into a question of whether or not managers make that much of a difference in a teams season performance.    That then led to a question of who was the best manager in baseball, and how can that be answered??    And I'm telling you right now whatever answer I give can't be 100% correct in all peoples minds, so this is just for fun.  Besides, even if I did answer the question many of you will be able to throw out data showing that I am wrong, or that I was right.   Point is, until Randy Johnson faces Ty Cobb, or Al Lopez gets to manage the Big Red Machine, or Ted Williams gets to play in his 'home-town' Petco Park, we will never be able to answer these questions.   But its sure fun as hell to argue over them.

As you see, I have called this piece "Baseball McCarthyism".    Since McCarthyism is generally defined as the act of making unsubstantiated accusations within a political arena, I thought it was not only a perfect title, but also topical.   Plus Joe McCarthy is often thought of as one of the games best managers, with the highest winning percentage in history (.615) and the most World Series Titles (7, tied with Stengel).    Yet Joe got to manage Rogers Hornsby, Hack Wilson, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams at one time or another, so perhaps there was a little "Phil Jackson" to his success.  Was McCarthy a great manager, or was his success only a result of his team talent.  If it was both, how much was Joe's influence??    Joe Torre was never thought of as a great manager before he joined the Yankees.   Earl, my co-host and the founder of Just Talking to the Cornfield, is a huge Yankee fan and he reminded me of this headline upon Torre's hiring.

It was a bum rap from the New York media who vividly remembered Joe Torre's tenure as a young player-manager with the Mets in the mid-70s to early 80s.   The year before Torre took over as manager, the Mets big three arms (Koosman, Matlack, Seaver) were all having great seasons, and the team had an ERA under 3.   The following season Joe Frazier was fired, Kingman and Seaver were traded and a rebuilding process began.   In addition, Matlack and Koosman regressed quite a bit, going from a collective 38-20 with a 2.82 ERA in 1976 to 15-35 and a 3.81 ERA in 1977.    Team ERA went up a full run, and their already limited offense couldn't nearly make up the difference.   The talent changed, yet Torre was labeled as a bad manager in the country's largest market.  

What the New York media didn't recall, or didn't care to bring up, was that Torre actually had done a fine job with the Atlanta Braves taking over for the fired Bobby Cox  (yes that Bobby Cox).   With basically the same team, Torre took the team from two straight seasons of roughly .500 ball, to starting off in his first year as managing the team to 13 straight wins and an eventual playoff birth.   He won 89 games in his first year, then 88 the second and 80 in the third.   After he left the Braves to join the Angels TV booth in 1985, the Braves rattled off 6 seasons of 66, 72, 69, 54, 63 and 65 wins.   So was Torre the difference maker??   Hard to say that he didn't have an impact since between 1975-1990 the Braves average 66 wins as a team (not including the '81 strike season) yet they averaged 86 wins during Torre's tenure.   

Torre's next stop as manager was the St. Louis Cardinals, who between 1988 and 1990 under Whitey Herzog average 77 wins.   In his first 3 seasons as manager Torre's Cardinals averaged 85 wins, including the 84-win 1991 season in which Todd Zeile led the team with 11 home runs.   Crazy.    But in 1994 the limited product GM Dal Maxvill put on the field finally caught up to them, as starters Bob Tewksbury (5.32 ERA), Allen Watson (5.52), Omar Oliveros (5.74) and closer Mike Perez (8.71) opened the floodgates far too often, and the Cardinals plummeted to last place.

Eventually Dal Maxvill resigned, Joe Torre was fired, Walt Jocketty was hired as GM, and he brought in Tony LaRussa, plucked Todd Stottlemyre and Dennis Eckersley from the A's, signed free agents Ron Gant, Gary Gaetti and Andy Benes and the Cardinals won their division and came within one game of the World Series.    Its a Christmas Miracle right??    Wrong.   Joe Torre was a bad manager, right??   Wrong.

And that's really the point of all this.    Until LaRussa is able to manage the same 94-95 team as Torre did, and until Torre gets to manage the 96 team that LaRussa did, you can't say who is the better manager.   Or at least I can't.

But check this out.   The last 4 teams vying for the World Series in 1996 were the Orioles, Yankees, Cardinals and Braves.    So....

1981 - Davey Johnson is hired as manager of AA Mets farm team
1981 - Joe Torre is fired as Mets manager and Bobby Cox is fired as Braves manager
1982 - Joe Torre replaces Bobby Cox as Braves manager
1984 - Davey Johnson becomes Mets manager, 2 years after Torre was fired
1995 - Joe Torre fired as Cardinals manager, replaced with Tony LaRussa
1996 - Joe Torre hired by Yankees

1996 - Orioles, managed by Davey Johnson lose ALCS to Yankees, managed by Torre.
The Braves, managed once again by Bobby Cox win NLCS over a Tony LaRussa managed Cardinals team.

4 Teams, led by 4 men who would go on to win 8,826 regular season games, 18 pennants and 9 World Series.   

But..... who was the best manager??!!

I thought about this for some time, and the best way that I thought to answer this question was to perform the following:

a) I created a table of all managers wins and losses, by team, from 1970-2012.   The reason I started with the 70s was that I felt that the "free-agent" era was more challenging to manage in, due to the transient nature that exists with players.

b) I added the record of a managers first two-years with a team and compared the winning percentage to the teams prior two seasons.   The reason I did that is because I wanted to compare a teams performance under a manager with as close to a similar roster than the prior manager had.   Of course there are 'outliers' to this process, such as Leyland's 1998 post-sell off Marlins, versus his World Championship 1997 club.   Bobby Cox also benefited in his second tenure as Braves manager in 1991 as he stepped out of the Braves  GM office to manage a team that had Avery, Glavine and Smoltz, coming into their prime.   Yet Russ Nixon managed the team in 89 and 90 with Glavine and Smoltz and they finished at or near the cellar each year.

c) Managers had to manage at least 2 teams to be able to show how they performed compared to their predecessor, and they had to manage at least 2 seasons for each team.

d) I compiled the number of instances in which teams improved under each manager as they joined the team.

e) The came the hard part.    I compiled the results and then looked at the managers whose teams improved greatly and looked to eliminate teams that gained specifically due to large free-agent acquisitions such as the example with LaRussa's 1996 Cardinals.   This is very subjective in nature of course, but reasonably speaking, its fair to see how the team LaRussa managed had much deeper talent than the Torre team the year before.    There were also other instances such as Bobby Cox managing the Braves team as Glavine and Smoltz were coming into their own, which was very similar to when Cox took over the Blue Jays in 1982 when Steib and Clancy elevated their game.

After completing this process, I was able to sort the data using all of the criteria, and thus..... the winners are:

Third Place:    Buck Showalter, 3 teams avg increase in winning %, 0.086 or 14 games per team.

 Buck got his start managing the Yankees before the big boys showed up, yet he still took them from a sub .500 team to a playoff-caliber team within his first 2 seasons.    The staff and lineup when he joined the team was basically the same, not withstanding the acquisition of Jimmy Key.   Most of the Yankee dynasty that you are used to seeing began under Torre's tenure, yet it was Buck Showalter who took over from Stump Merrill and put the team back into the playoffs and on a path of success that they are still riding.   Buck's serious and skilled nature is a strange dichotomy from his peculiar demeanor, noting that his nickname "Buck" reportedly came from his constantly walking around the minor league locker room completely nude.   Makes me hope "Stump" Merrill didn't get his nickname the same way.

In his 3rd year Buck led the Yankees to a tremendous (strike-shortened) 70-43 season, yet note that as mentioned only the first 2 years of a teams performance under the new manager were considered.   Thus, when Buck went to manage Arizona, and they achieved a record of 100-62 in his second year, that 'stop' in his managing career was not considered due to the very many acquisitions that were done by Arizona before that season.  However, in Buck's 3rd stop as manager, he took over a Texas team that had a ton of hitting and not much pitching.  In the 3 years before he took over as Manager the Rangers won 71, 73 and 72 games.    In his first year the team won 71 games, but that rose to 89 in his second season.  A dramatic turnaround for a team that didn't learn about the importance of pitching until Ron Washington's tenure.

And now Buck is managing the Orioles, a team that hasn't had a winning record since 1998.   A team that has finished in last place in each of the last 4 seasons.    With 3 starters having with ERA's above 5, and a lineup very similar to teams in recent memory, he has the Orioles in 2nd place with 74 wins in 133 games, noting that the team hasn't had more than 70 wins in 162 games since 2005.   Its not a coincidence.   Its George Constanza's porn hero, Buck Naked.


Second Place:   Davey Johnson 5 teams avg increase in winning %, 0.079 or 13 games per team.

As you can see, I've chosen Davey Johnson over Buck due to his ability to increase performance on 5 teams, even though his percentage is slightly less (1 win).  I'm not sure what to categorize Davey Johnson as.    He's not considered to be a fiery manager, he's also not considered to be a 'players-manager' like say, Joe Maddon.    The guy just keeps winning.   Perhaps its a combination of his cool Texas attitude and the skills he learned while obtaining a Bachelors degree in mathematics that give him the advantage in the dugout.    Some may be able to say that his numbers are skewed by the development of the Mets in the early 80's, (Gooden, Fernandez, Strawberry), except remember that he managed these guys in the minors as well and was able to manage that mess of a clubhouse and along the way became the first manager in the history of the National League to win 90 games in his first 5 seasons.

His abilities as a manager became questioned less after he saved a Reds team that began spiral after reaching quick success and a World Series title in 1990.   The year Johnson took over the team from Tony Perez,1993, they finished in 5th place, but Johnson then led them to two straight first place finishes only to be fired by Marge Schott for the crime of living with his fiancee.     The next season Johnson was managing the Orioles who hadn't been in the playoffs since they won the World Series in 1983, and had a revolving door of big name managers since (Ripken, Weaver, Ripken again, Frank Robinson, Johnny Oates, then Phil Regan).    No matter.   In his first year Johnson took the team to the playoffs and a 2nd place finish.   The following season the Orioles finished in first place and made their second trip to the ALCS game.    Yet, owner Peter Angelos and Johnson were never able to get along, and he was fired over a minor infraction.   Brilliant move by Angelos, Orioles haven't made the playoffs since, and while they were 1st in fan attendance in Johnson's last year (1996) they've never recovered (currently they are 8th in AL attendance even with their winnings way.)

Johnson had a short tenure with the Dodgers, taking the team to a second place finish in his 2nd season at the helm, after the team began to become stagnant under the management of Bill Russell and Glenn Hoffman (neither who have managed a Major League game since).    After working with Team USA and in the National front office, he returned to a Mangers post in the middle of the 2011 season.   Once again, some may say that the Nationals success is due to whats on the field.   And of course some of that is true.   But the Nationals have been good before, and they've had great managers before.  So why are they so good now??    This has been the best the Nationals / Expos have been since the strike of 1994 wiped out their playoff hopes.  (Note:   For a very personal insight into the Expos 1994 season you should read the book "Strike Three!!  by Russ Cohen and Nikco Riesgo).  Yes they have a very solid staff, and a nice lineup, yet the Expos, and other teams, in the past have also had a talented group of players, but the success didn't translate on the field.    Once again, the common denominator is the teams manager.   That's not to say that another manager wouldn't have success with this team, yet how much success??   But that's five teams, all who have improved dramatically under Johnson.  American League, National League, all teams with different makeups, all who improved swiftly under his management.


Before we go to the manager who has made the most positive difference, allow me to list out the bottom 5 (once again please note this is only the list of managers who have managed more than 1 team for at least 2 seasons, and the decrease is the net aggregate decrease in winning % in their first 2 years).

5) Hal McRae (-7 wins)
4) Jerry Manuel (-8 wins)
3) Ken Macha (-9 wins)
2) Pat Corrales (-9 wins)
1) Bob Boone (-14 wins)


And the others in the top 10:

10) Dallas Green - 2 Teams, +10 wins
9) Roger Craig - 2 Teams, + 14 wins
8) Whitey Herzog - 2 Teams, + 15 wins
7) Gene Mauch - 3 Teams, + 11 wins
6) Tony LaRussa - 3 Teams, + 11 wins
5) Dick Williams - 4 Teams, + 11 wins
4) Bobby Cox - 2 Teams, but +26 wins


So, that leaves just one man.    And if you haven't guessed..... shame on you.



First Place:   Billy Martin   7 teams avg increase in winning %, 0.101 or 16 games per team.

If you know anything about baseball history, you know about Martin.   His temper, his refusal to follow authority, and his unflappable disdain for those who didn't simply try.   While you'd expect him to have grown up in some rough inner city, many folks don't realize that he was born and raised in Berkeley, California.    And if it wasn't for some good fortune, the world may never have known about Martin.   

The Boston Braves had a manager who couldn't seem to cut it at the Major League level, yet he was a good baseball guy and so they offered him a spot at their minor league Pacific Coast level team, the Milwaukee Brewers.   The owner of the Brewers at the time, Bill Veeck tried to block the hiring, but as he was overseas in military service his objection was not followed.   The manager went on to win the pennant that year.   A few years later the manager was hired by another minor league team, the Oakland Oaks, and he went on to win the PCL championship in his first year.  As the Oaks were formally a Yankee affiliate, he was able to parlay his minor league success into a spot at the Major League level with the Yankees.   Early in his tenure, this man.....Casey Stengel, ensured to bring along Martin, his ultra-aggressive Oaks second baseman to the Yankees.

But instead of pouring over stories about the man, lets return to basics, and look at the numbers:

1968 Twins - 79-83

Billy Martin Hired
1969 Twins - 97-65,1st Place

1970 Tigers - 79-83

Billy Martin hired:
1971 Tigers - 91-71, 2nd Place
1972 Tigers - 86-70, 1st Place

1973 Rangers - 59-103
Billy Martin hired:  (Note he was hired in 73 and finished 9-14)
1974 Rangers - 84-76, 2nd place

1975 Yankees - 83-77
Billy Martin hired: (Note he was hired in 75 and was 30-26)
1976 Yankees - 97-62, 1st Place - Lost WS to Reds
1977 Yankees - 100-62, 1st Place - Won WS vs. Dodgers

1979 Oakland - 54-108
Billy Martin hired:
1980 Oakland - 83-79, 2nd Place

1982 Yankees - 79-83
Billy Martin hired:
1983 Yankees - 91-71, 3rd Place

1984 Yankees - 87-75
Billy Martin hired:
1985 Yankees - 97-64, 2nd place*
Team was 6-10 under Berra, 91-54 under Martin

and finally:
1988 Yankees - 45-48 (.483) under Piniella, 40-28 (.588) under Martin



So as many have asked of late, does the manager make a difference.   And to me the answer is of course they do.   Would the Cardinals have won last year without LaRussa??   Probably not.   Would the Tigers have won in 1984 with Gene Mauch at the helm and not Sparky Anderson??   Well we can't answer that question, but the one question I can answer for certain is that of all the managers I've seen in my lifetime, there is only one Number 1.   And if you don't know who number 1 is, ask Billy.   He made sure to let you know on his '72 Topps Card.

Thanks for listening,

Colonel Sunday


Just Talking to the Cornfield is baseball talk show that often goes horribly wrong.  Join Earl and the Colonel as they talk about baseball and all things baseball-related. We're mostly on Sunday nights at 9PM EST, but sometimes we prefer to do a post-Happy Hour show on Friday nights because normally we're idiots. But after a few cocktails we're geniuses. Until we listen to the show the next day. Sigh


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